Quiet Days

Drizzle; snow on the mountain, a quiet day reading The Ink Dark Moon, Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan and the latest Jack Reacher thriller by Lee Child. Lovely combination. One of the poems by Izumi Shikibu is perfect for the day.

All the flowers 
have fallen in this wind
blowing through the night.
What will there be
for consolation tomorrow?

[Translated by Jane Hirshfield with Mariko Aratani]

Frost on the grasses

We Ran Away

And drove down to visit the Clarke,  the Williams College Museum of Art and Mass M.O.C.A which had the O Canada show, complete with an intro and I quote "Confederated in 1867.....” Since when did confederation become a verb? Needless to say I was less than impressed with this exhibition. But at the Williams College Museum of Art there was a beautiful show of Sol LeWitt: The Well Tempered Grid. This is what the museum has to say about his grids, a structure close to my heart. "Inspired by his first encounter with the work of photographer Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904) in the late 1950s, LeWitt began experimenting with a loosely structured grid in several large oil paintings of 1960, based on the Muybridge motif of a running man. By 1962 he had simplified his use of this format to exclude figurative elements, and by 1964 he was making his first wall-mounted grid structures. When LeWitt made his first wall drawings in 1968 he used the grid as the underlying structural principle. Thereafter grids became a pervasive matrix in all of the media in which LeWitt worked—in his three-dimensional “structures,” drawings and gouaches on paper, photographic cycles, artist’s books, furniture, and wall drawings."  LeWitt was also a huge Bach fan [with a collection of 400 Bach audio cassettes] listening to Bach in the studio as he worked. And as an added treat, as we were wandering about, a piano tuner was tuning a harpsichord in one of the galleries. Just the sound of the repetitive AAA, BBB ect. was perfect.

SOL LEWITT, DETAIL FROM ALL COMBINATIONS OF ARCS FROM FOUR CORNERS, ARCS FROM FOUR SIDES, STRAIGHT LINES, NOT-STRAIGHT LINES AND BROKEN LINES

And for some extra fun, check out Edward Lifson's blog, Hello Beautiful, for his article on how the Sol LeWitt exhibition at Mass M.O.C.A was created. [Link here]  As he says " Almost an acre of LeWitt. They'll stay up for at least 25 years."

 While I find the acres of LeWitt overwhelming at Mass M.O.C.A, the Williams College Museum of Art has lots of the notebooks and some very beautiful graphite on black paper drawings. Much more intimate and closer to my sensibilities.

THE POSTER FOR LEWITT’S EXHIBITION AT THE SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS, 1976

Procrastination

I do it every fall, procrastinate that is. About cutting down the gardens and especially the big studio garden. Love looking at it when it is all about plant / shrub / tree structure and leaf color.  I'm going to try something new for me this year and leave the clippings on the beds. That's the theory, don't know if I'll be able to hold out.

outside my studio

Studio garden from above J.s studio

Stairs in the studio garden

More stairs in the garden

Sumac

Pennants waving in the breeze or perhaps gaudy prayer flags, the sumac are in their glory now; breathtakingly wondrous on a dull overcast day.  Photos never seem to do them justice. From the hottest reds, tinged with magenta, through the orange spectrum, into yellow and exiting by way of chartreuse. They wave and shout, Happy Thanksgiving. And the deer say "Thank-you, you are delicious!" Which means there will be short stumps of trunks by next spring. However, sumac grows like a weed; even the years the deer have eaten them to the ground the trees recover to put on the show another year.

Sumac leaves waving in the breeze

64 and Counting

Actually at 65 coffee cups but only 64 fit in the grid. Think I'll go for a hundred. This is fun, makes me bug eyed, but fun. Don't forget you can click on the image to make it bigger.

The 64 

Caught My Eye

Hours on the computer working on coffee cups. The pile grows. 56 are finished, 14 or 15 more to do. All I see are circles, moons, cells, suns. Taking a break, walking about outside, the garden nags me, I ignore it. And then my eye catches this.

Tiny mushrooms in the grass

Rain, cold, feels like November although it's only October 1st. Still, these tiny flowers from the Climbing Hydrangea, which bloomed in June, gladden the heart. Fading, brittle, almost transparent; barely here and almost gone.

fading Climbing Hydrangea Flowers

Sunrise

We are grabbing every chance to sit outside and watch the sunrise. Some mornings I am in my winter coat and some mornings are just too cold. For the past couple of days though the sunrise has been magnificent. Fog and low cloud roll over the mountain and down into our valley. Then rising, only to come falling down again. Rather like watching the world breathe itself into existence. And so we sit, and watch, and marvel. And drink our coffee.

Fog lifting over Camel Back

J. watching the fog over Camel Back 

The 36 Grid

Yesterday; final files prepared for 36 coffee cups, so they are ready to print. Then layer [in photoshop] all 36 together. Have a coffee with a friend and bring home 11 more cups. Great day

The 36

36 layers

A Slight Diversion, Part 2

After seeing the photos I posted the other day, a friend suggested I try darkening and upping the saturation. So I went back to the originals and did some tweaking. The dish towels are red [I am still not happy with it, bottom photo] but played about some more with color and blue won. Still unsatisfied I rotated Blue, which I feel works better. When I leave behind that which I saw and wanted, ie the luminosity of color, and let what is, play, fun things start to happen. The stripes are much more alive, and I have forgotten that the stripes are formed from the shadows from the chair slats. Still, it's probably for the oops pile.